1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image transmission apparatus, an image transmission method, and an image transmission program product, and particularly relates to a portable image transmission apparatus, a pick up image transmission method executed by the image transmission apparatus, and a pick up image transmission program product executed by the image transmission apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, cellular phones capable of communication by picture phone have been becoming widely available. With picture phone, an image of a speaker is transmitted simultaneously with speech, and therefore, it is possible to shorten psychological distance between speakers. In addition, portability of cellular phones eliminates restriction on place of calling. Therefore, background images behind speakers photographed by a camera are different in each case depending on time and place of calling. For example, when a picture phone receives a calling while one is walking on a road, faces of others may be included in the background, and thus, in some cases transmission of images including such a background to a person on the other end is not desirable. In this case, one should either give up using the picture phone or move to some other place where the background is fair if photographed, and then resume calling on picture phone. This results in such problems that one is unable to respond to requests of a person on the other end or it takes much time before answering an incoming call.
Conventionally, such a picture phone apparatus is known that recognizes the boundary between the person and background of a dynamic image photographed by the camera to extract the background region, replaces the background image portion of the dynamic image photographed by the camera by a background image stored in advance, and then transmits the dynamic image data.
However, this requires the sophisticated image processing of extracting the background region by recognizing the boundary between the person and background of a dynamic image photographed by the camera, and thus causes problems including failure of processing if the boundary between the person and background is recognized incorrectly. This also requires a substantial amount of time for the extraction processing of the background region, resulting in problems including elongated time required before transmission of the dynamic image.